


Five Stages

by doomedship



Category: The Good Doctor (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:00:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23298940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomedship/pseuds/doomedship
Summary: Claire processes what's happening to Melendez. Short fic, feelings are had.
Relationships: Claire Browne/Neil Melendez
Comments: 7
Kudos: 91





	Five Stages

**Author's Note:**

> We're back to the ol' angst as we wait for the finale. 
> 
> (Edit: with hindsight, this one is kind of a bummer.)

_***_

_i. denial_

_***_

She checks the scan fifteen times, then checks it again. She gets a second opinion, then a third. The third is Lim, and she can see the look on her face when she checks the details, figures out what it means and for whom. 

Claire forces down the panic, refuses to let it sink in. 

There's got to be another way. 

She finds Shaun and shoves the test results under his face, waits while he takes them and stares dreamily. Shaun's the poster boy for the point-one-percent long shot, if anyone's going to tell her there might be another conclusion it's him. 

"I agree with Dr Andrews and Dr Lim," he says plaintively. "There is no other possibility."

She gets up and slams the door. 

***  
_ii. anger_

***

She cries when she's angry. Always has. 

She hangs over the balcony and sobs her heart out, and this time there's no him to come and stand next to her and talk away her tears. 

He's lying in a hospital bed three floors down and he's got an IV in one arm and puncture wounds from a half dozen injections in the other, and he's probably wondering where the hell she is.

She hasn't seen him since he was brought in. 

Because she is so, so angry. 

She's got a crucifix wrapped around her fingers. Her mother's, the prop of a woman she never was and both of them wished she could be.

She squeezes so tightly the metal begins to hurt. 

Let us pray, she thinks, and then she almost hurls the chain off the balcony.

She looks up at the sky to a god she thinks has always been mocking her and she laughs, an angry, bitter sound. 

If he dies she thinks she'll be angry forever. 

***  
_iii. bargaining_

_***_

She doubles back on her rounds. Works twice as hard as she usually does, makes sure nothing else is missed with any of her patients. 

And when she runs out of those she visits and revisits his file, reads articles, preps the surgery until her eyes are red from tiredness. 

If she can just do more, she thinks, then he will live. 

If she can be better, he won't be punished. 

Glassman finds her hours later in the VR surgery room. He switches the computer off, pulls the goggles from her face. 

"You can't prep this away," he tells her. "Nothing you do is going to change the reality. All you can do is be there for him."

She nods. But after Glassman's gone she doesn't go to his room, though the ward number is seared into the back of her brain. Every time she shuts her eyes she sees him lying there. 

She thinks maybe if she stays away, if she stops loving him, he'll be okay. 

After all, everything she's ever loved gets taken away. 

***  
_iv. depression_

_***_

She's still in the hospital the next morning, the day of his surgery. 

Morgan walks in with her bandaged hands and dark circles and takes one look at Claire with her red eyes and slept in clothes and says bitterly, "I feel you, sister."

Claire bursts into tears over the textbook she's not read a word of in hours, and Morgan sighs and sits down next to her. 

"I love him," she says, and Morgan stills. 

"Yeah, I kind of figured," she says, flippant and ruthless to the end. "You should probably tell him that and not me, though."

"What if he dies?" Claire says, and the awful ugly truth of it starts to fill her with a crushing, breath-stealing grief that even her mother's death didn't bring. 

"C'est la vie," shrugs Morgan, holding up her ruined hands. She walks out of the room defiantly, and Claire wishes she had her steel.

Instead she is all heartbreak and terror and it drowns her.

She takes the crucifix from her neck.

***  
_v. acceptance_

***

She dithers on the threshold with half an hour to go. 

His eyes on hers are just as warm as ever, though his skin is clammy and grey. The monitors beep around him, and it's like seeing an eagle plucked out of the sky. 

"Thought you were going to let 'em knock me out without saying goodbye," he says weakly.

"I love you," she says back. And she sits down in the chair beside him before her head starts spinning.

He looks up at her for a long moment, and the corners of his mouth quirk up. "Don't blame you," he murmurs. 

"I might lose you today," she says, and he nods slowly. 

"Yeah," he says. "Make sure they play Elvis at my funeral if you do."

She shuts her eyes and he sighs. 

"I guess it might be my last chance to say I love you too," he says quietly. "Have done for a while."

She breathes in slowly, and reaches in her pocket before she takes his hand. She drapes the crucifix over his palm, watches him close his fist. 

"I'll be here when you come out," she tells him. "No matter what."


End file.
